So I know I’m waaaay late to this game, but my husband and I started streaming Friday Night Lights recently, starting from season 1 of course since we’d never seen one episode before, and I absolutely love the show. For regular network TV, which I’m usually not a fan of unless you’re talking Lost, this show is really great.

It is well written, superbly acted and sucks you in to these characters from the get go.  Albeit, the only part that may be a bit unrealistic if you’re a football fan is all the last minute nail biting wins the Panthers tend to experience.

I surprised myself with liking this show because I’m really not a football fan myself. My husband is a huge football fan though, and he likes the series too. It’s not just about football of course, so even the casual fan like myself can get in to the stories of these kids and the adults that mold and teach them, and all the teen and adult drama that goes with it.

We’re about nine episodes in, and there hasn’t been one bad episode yet, although I’m sure there will be one since they put a whopping 22 episodes in their first season, a bold move for what could have been a short lived series if it wasn’t picked up.

Kyle Chandler is great as the young Eric Taylor who coaches the small town Texas football team who is on their way up. The sport means everything to the people in the town of Dillon, including the boosters that support the team and the football fanatical mayor of the city.

The kids are under immense pressure to perform for college and pro scouts, and most of them are just small town kids that are looking to make something of themselves.  The first episode has the star quarterback getting hurt badly. You think he may be off the show, but in fact his rehabilitation ends up being one of the more gripping story lines of the series.

The actor who plays the first quarterback Jason Street is a pretty amazing actor. He makes you feel for him and how drastically his life has changed from being a top tier prospect for the pros to being in a wheelchair.

We also have Connie Britton, who plays Coach Taylor’s wife.  She’s an excellent actress as well, and for me it’s quite a departure watching her in a happy marriage, which is a huge departure from her unhappy tortured marriage in the more recent “American Horror Story”.

Friday Night Lights is immensely enjoyable, and it captures the spirit of a small town well, the good and the bad.

I had high hopes for the spy thriller “The Debt”. First off, it has some highly regarded actors in it like Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington, and the newcomer Jessica Chastain, who did seem to do a pretty good job in this movie.  Second, it hooked me in with the trailer where it appeared something very sinister happened.

However, the movie just isn’t all the great of a ride. Once you find out the only thing these people are covering for is something that just doesn’t seem all that earth shattering in the grand scheme of things – especially since so much time has passed, something about this movie just loses its importance and urgency.

In short, I lost interest.  It’s not a bad movie by any means, it’s just built up to be something it’s not. Then, toward the end it spirals into the slightly ridiculous and far fetched.  That really disappointed me as I figured since the “secret” wasn’t all that earth shattering, at least they would try to keep the climax fairly believable.

The movie is essentially a two period story, which vascillates between when the characters were younger, agents for the Mossad who were sent on a risky mission to bring a Nazi war criminal to justice.  The war criminal is a doctor who must be taken back to Israel for justice, but must first be extracted by this covert team of three young agents.

There is also a somewhat contrived love story in the mix. Sam Worthington’s character falls in love with the character played by Jessica Chastain (the younger version of Helen Mirren).  However, since he fails to make a move, his swarthy womanizing counterpart swoops in and seals the deal (a little too easily if you ask me, which is why I had a hard time buying this love story).

Their love story seems to endure over the years, even after she becomes pregnant by her later-husband that she ends up divorcing.  And yet, Worthington’s character seems tortured by the truth that haunts them all over the years.  So tortured that he does something drastic when confronted with the possibility.

Another hard part to take seriously – because the truth is not all that bad, and he does it so he won’t betray Mirren’s character, who should have just fessed up before her daughter took to writing a book based on the fiction the three cooked up to cover their tracks.

The acting is good enough, that’s for sure.  I particularly enjoyed the performance of the guy who plays the Doctor who is a fugitive that has changed his identity to protect himself from justice. He has committed unspeakable crimes against humanity. However, you are not sure that this is him until a pivotal point in the movie, which he makes fascinating and hard to look away. He was definitely the bright spot of the movie.

So, American Horror Story has ended its first and very interesting season recently.  This leaves us hungry for a season II as we see clearly where the producers of this series are headed – a clean cast and new story lines for season II as it seems the LA house they lived in previously is pretty much done.

The first season followed the story of Ben and Vivienne Harmon, a pshychiatrist and his wife who are recovering from Ben’s infidelity earlier on, where she caught him in bed with one of his students (he also taught at a local university).

Their rebellious teenaged daugher Violet was a main part of the haunted house story as well.  All are very talented and pretty looking actors that made the story more compelling.

However, perhaps the most compelling characters were the next door neighbors, the ghost teen Tate, played by a masterful young actor Evan Peters who is bound to become a teen heart throb after playing the tortured, dark soul Tate who’s done some very disturbing and evil things and still manages to find his way into the audience’s forgiveness.

You find yourself sort of rooting for this guy for no apparent reason.  The first season follows this dysfunctional family through their trials and tribulations that the house puts them through, including an impregnation by the ghost Tate, a gay couple who still haunts the house, an ex mistress who haunts Ben and too many other ghosts to keep track of.

My husband and I thought they could have scaled back on the ghosts a bit, and thought the series always seemed to “blow its wad” in one episode and drop multiple story lines, almost too many to keep track of instead of building a slow horror.

However, now knowing that the series intends to put a new family in a new situation every year, it now makes sense on why the first season seemed to move at lightning speed in the story lines and character development.

Jessica Lange also adds to the talented cast. Nominated for multiple acting awards over her career, you can see why in this show.  Lange always tends to add a very dramatic flair to her roles, almost too dramatic at times, but those are the characters she plays, and this one is supposed to be over the top.

The first season was pretty solid. It’s edgy, and that’s why it’s on so late at night on the FX channel, plus it shows partial nudity and some very adult situations.  Looking forward to the next story in season II!!!